


Plausible Deniability

by Weevilo707



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, Gen, Nerdiness, everyone knows this but him, taako is a lot smarter than he thinks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-13
Updated: 2018-12-13
Packaged: 2019-09-17 18:45:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16979808
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Weevilo707/pseuds/Weevilo707
Summary: Taako had always been a bit of an idiot. He knew it, and everyone around him should have realized it by now as well. Any evidence to the contrary were flukes.Taako wasn't, and never would be, a nerd.





	Plausible Deniability

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DarkrystalSky](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarkrystalSky/gifts).



Taako was twelve years old, and he was going to  _ get this.  _ Just say the incantation, make the symbol with his thumb on the lodestone, and  _ magic. _

He huffed in frustration as the spatula in front of him stayed broken, the handle snapped clean off. Frowning, he grabbed the spellbook he stole from the library in that last town. He couldn’t figure out what he was doing wrong. He should’ve found a wizard to ask in town before they went on the road again, there weren't any traveling with the caravan at the moment. Maybe he’d have better luck if he could get a wand. He knew you didn’t  _ need _ one to cast cantrips though, so it should be fine.

“Okay, just…” Taako said, putting the book back down and focusing on the spatula again. Just say the incantation, make the symbol on the lodestone with his thumb,  _ and- _

There was a small crackle of energy around the spatula, and Taako tried to focus as the two pieces started to form together.

“There you are!” Lup said, behind him out of nowhere. Taako jolted, dropping the rock and his concentration. The two pieces of the spatula fell away from each other and Taako let out a groan of frustration.

“Damn it Lup, I almost had it that time,” he grumbled, picking the spell component back up and dusting it off.

“Almost had what? What have you been doing back here? I’ve been looking for you for like, two hours,” Lup asked, and Taako hadn’t realized it’d been that long. He must’ve gotten more wrapped up in this whole thing than he realized.

“This spell. I’ve been trying to get it all day and I almost had it,” he said, adjusting the pieces of the broken spatula. Lup came and sat down next to him, grabbing the book he had set up and looking over it curiously. They’d only just started trying to learn magic, and neither of them were particularly good at it yet.

“What does any of this even  _ mean? _ Like, maybe if the incantations weren’t a bunch of gibberish it’d actually make sense,” Lup complained, reading over the incantation for mending. Taako had read it enough times that he had it memorized, even if he couldn’t get the actual spell to work yet.

“It’s not gibberish, it’s Draconic. I’m pretty sure the incantation means like, fix? Or uh, congeal? Something like that,” he said. When he glanced back over at Lup she had a funny smile on her face, and Taako quickly frowned once again. “What’s that look for?”

“You’re such a dork Koko,” she said, amusement clear in her voice. Taako immediately had an incredibly offended look on his face at that. 

“Fuck you! You can’t just say I’m a dork every time I know something you don’t Lup,” he said.

“That’s true. But I can say it every time you’re a dork, which is often, cause my brother’s a big dork,” she teased. Taako huffed in annoyance, turning away from her and back towards the broken spatula.

“Nope, not true. There’s a difference between a dork and an awesome wizard,” he said. To prove his point he tried to focus on the mending spell again, saying the incantation and making the symbol on the lodestone. Once again there was a crackle of energy, and this time nothing distracted him as the two pieces of the spatula mended back together.

“Hell yeah! I told you!” Taako said, snatching the spatula up and inspecting it.

“That’s  _ awesome _ Taako!” Lup said, jumping up and looking at his work as well. “Still a dork though,” she added, grinning brightly.

Taako swatted her on the back of the head with his newly fixed spatula.

——

Taako read over the paper again, and then a third time. It needed to be perfect if he was going to get into the IPRE. It was a shoo-in that Lup would get in, Lup could manage whatever she wanted, but his shit needed to be on point.

Sure, he knew he  _ could _ do it, but things didn’t come easy to them. They always needed to be  _ better _ than everyone else for anyone to even give them the time of day. Luckily, they  _ were _ better than everyone else most of the time, so it wasn’t usually an issue.

He and Lup had never had much of a formal education though. It was just what they picked up on the road from traveling wizards and stolen books and whatever temple would let them stay for the winter. All of that led them to be pretty damn powerful wizards, but this was different.

He’d never done anything like writing up a paper on the workings of transmutation magic in regards to interplanar travel. Ugh, even thinking something like that was a mouthful.

“You’re not still putting off your IPRE submission, are you?” Lup asked, peeking her head into his room. Or well, into the room at this temple to Oghma they were staying at.

“No, it’s done. Take it from me I don’t ever want to look at it again,” he said, slumping his head on the desk and holding the paper out for her. As soon as he felt Lup take it from him he used that arm to continue hiding his face in the desk. It was quiet for a good long while, Taako could only assume as Lup read his paper.

“Holy shit Taako, this is  _ really good,”  _ Lup said. Taako shrugged, not looking up.

“No it’s fucking terrible, have fun at the institute without me. I’ll just stay here cooking in the gutter,” he muttered.

“Don’t be so dramatic. You’re gonna knock the socks off of these fools with how smart you are and they’re gonna  _ beg _ you to join their fancy science nerd team,” Lup insisted.

“Sounds fake but okay,” he said.

“Are you gonna come with me to hand these in or not?” Lup asked, and Taako groaned, pushing himself up from his chair.

“Ugh, yes I’m coming okay, fuck,” he grumbled.

Two weeks later there were two matching letters from the Institute, and inside were acceptance letters for the both of them.

“I fucking told you bro. We’re both smart as shit,” Lup said, beaming over her own acceptance letter.

“Smart enough to fool these clowns into letting this idiot in, I guess I’ll give you that much,” he said, knocking his sister’s hand away when she tried to smack him with her envelope.

——

The years since they left on what was  _ supposed _ to be a two month mission had been rough. Or, decades more accurately. They’d been at this for so long now, and sometimes it felt like they weren’t making any progress at all.

Now was, surprisingly, not one of those times.

Normally Taako let Barry and Lup take the lead on the more science-y parts of their research, but he was onto something here. Even since he noticed those strange beings in the ethereal plane that time he cast blink, he’d been trying to look into them. It’d been a couple of cycles now, and he’d figured a lot of shit out.

They were scouts for the hunger, they would run away almost immediately when anyone went into the ethereal plane. There would be more and more of them as the year progressed.

It was when he was looking into them that he realized the way the hunger would cut off the other planes when it attacked. It’d always been an issue, the way Merle’s magic would weaken at the end of every year.

He was onto something here though. He didn’t know how he was supposed to fix it, but figuring out what it was  _ doing _ was the first step.

“Hey Barold! Get in here and check this shit over, how much did I screw up?” he called once he was sure he had everything written up. Barry quickly came from where he was working on something with the light in the other lab. They were lucky, they managed to get it pretty early this cycle.

“Huh? What’s up Taako?” Barry asked, and Taako tossed some of the notes he’d finished writing up at him.

“I think I figured out how the planes get cut off by the hunger, tell me how bad I fucked up,” Taako said. He saw the interest flash across Barry’s face before he quickly started reading. Taako started rolling a pen back and forth across the table, trying to look like he wasn’t waiting to hear what Barry had to say.

“I- shit Taako this is… yeah, fuck, this makes sense,” Barry said, and Taako shrugged.

“I mean, it just seemed pretty obvious,” he said, but Barry quickly shook his head.

“It’s not obvious though. The  _ way _ it’s blocking off the bonds you’ve described here is just- you’re a genius Taako,” Barry said, and Taako scoffed, rolling his eyes.

“Okay, you’re the nerd here Barold, don’t go trying to put those labels on me,” he said. Barry finally looked up from excitedly reading over his work to give Taako an amused smile.

“I mean, I’m not gonna argue with you on the nerd comment, but didn’t you and Lup graduate with like, record scores at the IPRE? I’m pretty sure that automatically makes you both nerds too,” Barry said, but Taako had already stood up and started heading out of the room.

“Nope! Not happening those are lies and  _ slander.  _ You two can have fun being brainiac dorks all you want, but leave me out of it,” he said, stomping out of the room.

“Whatever you say Taako!” Barry called after him, not sounding convinced in the slightest.

——

Taako knew he was an idiot. The only thing he had any real skill in was cooking, and he could almost claim to be decent at transmutation magic. Other than that though he was a simpleton in anything that mattered. He couldn’t read a map right and he struggled with budgeting for Sizzle It Up because he always fucked up the math. More often than not he’d get up to do something and would stand there like a dumbass because whatever he’d been planning had fled from his mind in a fuzz.

So Taako had long since accepted that all he had to his name were his looks and his cooking. Both of those things were damn good though, so he couldn’t really complain.

“Damn it.”

Taako looked up from where he was working on a new recipe for their next show. He wasn’t sure what exactly yet, but he was feeling some sort of pasta.

“What’s up?” he asked, trying to look and see what was the matter. Sazed had stopped the cart for some reason, but he was pretty sure they were still far from any town.

“Hey Taako, could you come up here and uh, take a look with your magic eyes? Or whatever? There’s something out in the road and I can’t tell what it is in the dark. Don’t want to run the horse right into like, a sleeping bear,” Sazed said. Taako pushed himself up off the floor and put his notebook down on the counter.

“They’re not magic dude, it’s just the structure. Elven eyes are a little longer so we’ve got room for more rods instead of cones like in your eyes, and we got the uuuuh, tapetum lucidum, you know? That thing that makes em all shiny in the dark, that thing,” he muttered, slumped over the back of the driver's seat to get a look at the road. “It’s just a log, go around it,” he said.

Taako expected him to start the cart and move on then, but they were still stopped. When he looked over, Sazed was staring at him. “What?”

“When did you get so smart?” Sazed asked. Taako huffed, pulling himself up from where he laid across the back of the seat and started back to where he left his cooking notes. 

“Don’t know what you’re talking about. That’s just a thing everyone knows. Or like, every elf, probably,” Taako said.

“Is it?” Sazed asked, finally starting up the cart again, carefully maneuvering around the log in the road.

“Must be. Don’t know how else I’d know it. Do I look like the kind of nerd who’d be cracking open fucking science books to you?” he asked, sounding aghast by the mere idea.

“Yeah, I guess not,” Sazed said, laughing slightly at the thought.

——

Taako was looking for a moment away from the rest of the chucklefucks someplace quiet. He was in sore need of some chill time and the library in the bureau was always a guaranteed place for quiet. Also Magnus and Merle probably wouldn’t be able to find him for at least most of the day. He wouldn’t say he frequented there often, but he was there enough that he knew the layout pretty well.

Specifically, he knew a corner where he could hole up without anyone bothering him. The director had been hinting that a new mission was coming up soon, although she hadn’t said what yet. Taako figured everyone was too busy getting prepped for Boyland’s rights of remembrance to bother filling them in on the details.

Still, a mission was coming soon and that meant more danger and probably almost dying. Taako was an idiot, but he wasn’t stupid. So, he got comfy in his quiet corner of the library with a couple higher level spellbooks to try and minimize that chance of dying.

Taako wasn’t sure how long he spent there, reading through and trying to memorize a few new spells. It certainly didn’t feel like long enough when a head popped up on the other side of the table.

“Good afternoon sir!” Angus said happily.

“Alright, how’d you find this spot?” Taako asked, letting himself sound more annoyed than he actually was.

“I’m the world’s greatest detective sir, it wasn’t hard,” Angus said, starting to look over the books Taako had set aside. “Oh, is this a secret? Like a special alone time study spot?” he asked, sounding excited by the idea.

“Yeah, sure why not let’s call it that. Just don’t tell tweedledum and tweedledee and I won’t get on you for busting me,” he said. Angus nodded intently before focusing fully on the books Taako had out. The one he was going through now was one Taako had just finished with. It’d had a couple fifth level spells that seemed pretty useful, they’d been easier to learn than Taako had expected. He hadn’t gotten the chance to try any of them out yet, but they made sense in his head.

“Wow sir, these look really complicated,” Angus said, skimming through them. Taako shrugged, not looking up from the spell he was currently reading. Planar binding. Seemed powerful as fuck, but Taako doubted he’d be able to get the money for it. Still, wouldn’t hurt to know.

“Eh, not really. What level are you learning now?” Taako asked.

“Um, just level one spells still. Oh! But I did manage to get comprehend languages down finally!” Angus said excitedly. Taako hadn’t been teaching him that long, the fact that he already had a couple first levels spells under his belt was proof of how smart the kid was.

“Hell yeah, that spell should be pretty useful for all the nerd shit you get up to,” he said. Angus smiled brightly at that, soaking up the praise and not bothered in the least at being called a nerd.

“Sir, I just wanted to say thanks again for teaching me magic. I really appreciate you taking time out of your studies, I’m lucky to have such a smart magic teacher,” Angus said. It wasn’t rare for the kid to get all genuine and sentimental, and Taako appreciated it about as much as he appreciated it every other time. Which was to say, not at all.

“I’m taking time out of my extremely busy schedule for sure but believe me it ain’t time I'd spend  _ studying.  _ You got a baller magic teach for sure, but don’t go thinking I’m into that books and paper nerd junk like you,” Taako insisted. Angus gave him that look that he gave people when he thought they were lying.

“But sir, you’re in the library all the time. Most of your recent checkouts were for arcane tomes fourth level and up, although there were a few cookbooks mixed in too,” Angus said, and Taako frowned at that.

“How are you looking at the shit I check out?” he asked, and Angus suddenly looked nervous.

“It would be unwise for a detective to reveal all the sources of their information,” he said, and Taako rolled his eyes at that.

“Yeah yeah, I swear has no one taught you the concept of privacy? Whatever, get lost. Those are just so I don’t beef it on a mission, not wanting to die isn’t exclusive to nerds,” Taako said. Angus still didn’t look like he believed him, but nodded and started heading off.

“Alright, um, thanks again!” he said. Taako huffed, giving Angus a halfhearted wave before returning to his book.

———

Starting a school was more work than Taako expected. Sure, he had other people to take care of most of it, but it was his school and so he had to make the final call on most shit. There were a lot of rules and regulations that apparently he couldn’t bypass because he’d saved all of existence.

Taako thought that was bullshit, but it was more work to argue it than to just go along with it all. He was as always someone looking to do as little work as possible.

“Are you in here?” Kravitz asked, peeking into the office. Taako hadn’t realized he was back yet and grinned brightly as he turned around in his chair.

“Yep, you finished up with your sinister work as death for the day?” he said, and Kravitz chuckled some and nodded.

“Yes. Oh, Lup and Barry said they’re coming over for dinner tonight. We apparently don’t get a say in the matter,” Kravitz said, and Taako rolled his eyes, not actually bothered by this in the slightest. Lup and Barry were over most nights. It was nice, having them so close again.  

“Yeah, why am I not surprised,” he said, turning back towards the paperwork on the desk. It was a lot of junk about curriculum and shit, because apparently ‘everyone leaves a dope ass wizard’ wasn’t detailed enough.

Kravitz walked over, casually looking through some of the finished documents. Taako let him do whatever, working through some weird legal document. Ugh, he’d never been a fan of legal shit, he might ask Ren to look through this part instead.

“I barely understand any of this, are you sure your students will be able to get it?” Kravitz asked, something like amusement in his voice. Taako scoffed at that, putting the papers he’d been looking at aside for now.

“Of course they’ll get it. They’re smart kids, or they will be once I’m done with em,” he said, and Kravitz smiled at that.

“Maybe try not to be too hard on them. Not everyone is as quick witted and intelligent as you,” he said.

“Obviously, but hey, I was an idiot my whole life and look at me now. They’ll get it,” he insisted.

“I wouldn’t exactly call you an idiot love,” Kravitz said, and Taako shrugged. Normally he would put up more of an argument in that regard, but well, it wasn’t like he was that wrong. Taako supposed he was like, decently smart when push came to shove.

“If you say so my dude. I’m still not as much as a nerd as the rest of you though, I’ll fucking stand by that,” he said, and Kravitz laughed. It didn’t sound like he believed him in the slightest, but for once that didn’t really bother Taako.

“If you insist,” Kravitz said and Taako nodded, turning back to his work.

“I’ll be out in a bit to start dinner,” he called when Kravitz started to walk out of the office.

“Alright, I’ll leave you to your work until then,” he said. With that, Taako was left alone in his office again. His office full of arcane tomes and paperwork and a whole board full of progress on the special magic school he was opening.

Fucking hell.

Taako might be a little bit of a nerd.

**Author's Note:**

> this was a request by darkrystalsky that i greatly enjoyed doing. i love writing nerdko, he's such a smart boy. also, that period of my life where i was _really into_ learning about eyes and stuff has finally paid off. 
> 
> as always, thanks for reading and i hope you enjoyed~


End file.
